I was reading a Bible study book this morning, and when I came to one part I had to stop, pray and write in my journal.  I couldn’t move any farther until it was done, and I have not picked up my book yet.  The author used the example of Daniel being thrown into the lions’ den but being saved by God because of his faith.  Before that she had shown the example of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were saved by God when thrown into the fiery furnace. 

But it wasn’t that that stopped me in my tracks.  It was what happened after Daniel was pulled out of the den of lions.  At the king’s command, the men who had falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the lions’ den, along with their wives and children.  And before they reached the floor of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones (Daniel 6:24).

I have a very hard time reading about children being killed in the Bible.  I don’t like to see it anywhere, mind you, but in the Bible it’s for a purpose.  It’s found throughout the Old Testament.  I’ve had conversations with my husband about this many times before, how children are innocent, and why should they be killed?  What did they do?  To which he always replies that they would grow up and become like their parents, and possibly even worse.  When they become a certain age they may set out to basically seek revenge.

Fine, whatever, I get it.  I still hate it.  I have a huge heart for children, and I don’t like to see any of them hurt, regardless of what stage they’re at in life.

As I said before, I opened up my journal and started writing.  Scribbling may be the correct term for it as I was writing furiously.  What came out of my pen was that children can be harmed by our choices.  Here’s a quick look into my journal (a small portion of what I wrote):

      Your choices affect your children.  They can harm them.  Be aware of
       your words and your actions.  Little ones are watching.  Make the right
       choices.  For their sake shed pride and look for the Truth.

It doesn’t matter what side of an issue you are on.  What you say and do will affect your children.  My two oldest are in middle school, and they would come home complaining about how there was another huge debate between students in their classroom about our newest president.  As 7th and 8th graders, how much do they truly understand?  They know what they’ve been told by the adults in their lives, and how they go about this debate is based upon how they were taught at home.  Social media is a filled with attacks against the opposite side.  “If you’re not with me, you’re against me.”  That seems to be the mentality that people take.  “You are wrong, I’m right.”  And yet, there are so many bumper stickers out there that say:  TOLERANCE.

Here’s what “tolerance” means: Recognition of and respect for the opinions, practices, or behavior of others (Webster’s II New College Dictionary…yes, I still have one of those).  It does not end with, “as long as they are the same as yours.”

Now, since I had my dictionary open, I looked at all the words for tolerate and came across “toleration.”  I didn’t even know that was a word.  The first definition, number 1, was Tolerance.  Of course I read all the definitions, so number 2 caught my attention.  It says, “Official recognition of the rights of persons and groups to hold dissenting views, esp. with regard to religion.”  Being an English major, I grabbed my lesson from my Literary Criticism class and looked up Dissension.  The definition says, “A difference in opinion, esp. one that leads to argument or strife.”  Check and check.  Looking one more word down to Dissent (where dissenting is mentioned), “To differ in opinion or feeling: DISAGREE.”

So tolerance shows that we are able to disagree, but that we should still respect those who do disagree with us.  Interesting.  That reminds me of a verse from the Bible.  Jesus replied, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-39).  So as Christians, we need to first and foremost love God with all our being.  This includes doing all He has instructed in His Book, and all that He has told us through prayer and through other Christians.  With that in mind, we need to then make sure to treat others the way that we want to be treated.  I’m sure those hurling insults at other people because of their beliefs would hate it if they were mocked for theirs.

Is every belief right?  No.  Basically, if it goes against the Word of God, then how can it be right?  But as Christians we are taught to “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”  That means that we don’t have to “tolerate” what the person does and believes, but we need to love them because they are a creation of God, and God has called us to do just that.  This passage was spoken by Jesus Christ Himself.  How, then, can we not get it?  It comes straight from the source, and therefore there should be no need to question it.  Is it easy?  Nope.  But then, as I’ve written in my journal recently, “God’s way is not easy.”  And I know I’m not the first (nor the last) to say this.  It may not be easy, but it’s right.

So what does this mean, and what does this have to do with children?
Regardless of whether you have your own children or not, those younger than you are looking to you as an example.  What are you going to teach them?  What are you going to show them by your words and actions, even if it’s not directed toward them?

Those in the Bible, who lost their lives right along with their entire family, were not good examples of how to be.  They did not please God.  They sought to please only themselves.

When I see on the news that a person has been arrested for a terrible crime (any crime really, but especially those that are pure evil), all I can think about (after the “shock, horror”) is that that person was once someone’s baby.  They were born into the world the same way everyone else was.  A helpless baby who had to be fed and changed; they had to learn how to walk and talk.  Maybe I’m just strange, but that’s what I do.  I think about what happened.  Where did it go wrong?  They may have been raised by a loving family and then somewhere just lost their way.  It’s possible, but I would say that the majority of people who do these crimes did not have the “happy-go-lucky life.”  Or, the people who raised them taught them to hate instead of to love. 

They may have been loved by their families, but how an adult responds to a situation can have an effect on them.  If we approach a situation with true tolerance for another, using respect as we try to figure out what is really going on, then our children will learn to have that same patience and respect.  However, if we don’t stop and think, get the facts, and definitely don’t care about respecting the other person, then that’s what our children will learn, and we’ll always have problems.

So before you say anything, before you do anything, before you make a post on social media, stop and think.  Who are you affecting by this?  Who is watching?  What harm will you be doing if you lash out in pride?  Shed your pride.  Stop and think.  Pray.  Read your Bible.  And remember, you have the power to affect a child’s life; is it going to be for good, or for evil?

I admit that I’m not perfect in this, and no one will be.  We will slip up.  But we can always go back to Him who made us and repent.  We should also go back to those little ears and eyes, apologize to them, and teach them the right way to be.  Remember: God’s way is not easy, but it’s right.

Lord, for all the times I have jumped the gun, using my mouth and my actions before seeking You, I am sorry.  You have put Your little children in my care, and it is my responsibility to raise them up for You.  My own pettiness, my own pride, needs to get out of the way.  Lord, I can only do this with You.  Help me to be the example you want me to be for Your precious ones.  Help me to treat others with respect whether I agree with them or not.  Help me to treat them as I would like to be treated.  Heavenly Father, thank You.  You alone are good and worthy to be praised.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

*While getting ready to start a new post, I realized that I still had a blog entry that was never posted.  It was written in April 2016, so the events are a little old, but the message is still there.  I'm also in a different place today than I was then.  However, I thought I would still share it.

His wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity?  Curse God and die!”  ~Job 2:9

Okay, so this is not the “happy go lucky,” “God is amazing” Scripture verse that typically gets focused on.  Curse God and die.  Wow.  No, I’m not telling you to do this.  I promise.

Let me explain what is going on here.  Job; we’ve all heard of him, right?  He’s the guy in the Bible who had a great life.  He was rich.  He had a large family and great friends.  He loved and feared God so much that nothing Satan did to him swayed his opinion.  Sure, he cried out in anguish – he’s human after all – but he continued to praise God.  He lost his livestock, he lost his children, he lost his servants.  His response to this was, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21).  In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing (Job 1:22)

I’m going to come right out and say that it’s not easy to continue praising God in these times.  Times of trial, times of loss.  But it did not stop Job from praising him.  He saw his situation in a light most of us probably wouldn’t think of.  He came with nothing, so of course he should leave with nothing.
In chapter two, where we find the above verse, he was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head (Job 2:7).  Satan was trying hard to get Job to curse God.  So taking away everything from him didn’t work.  Okay, let’s try physical pain and suffering.  Job, however, refused to rise to the challenge.  Verse 8 simply says, Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.  If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I am very visual.  I picture Job, everything around him destroyed, just sitting there, nonchalantly picking up a piece of pottery that had been broken in the previous destruction, scratching at his sores.  He’s not getting angry, he’s not yelling out.  He’s just sitting there, looking around, scratching.

Now, I’m sure that’s not exactly how it went down.  I’m sure he was upset, distraught, confused, but in my eyes he acted like one of those people who isn’t fazed by anything, and you just want to shake them.

And that’s where the devil was at work again.  The Bible doesn’t say, “Satan went to Job’s wife and told her to say this,” but we know her words were from him nonetheless.  Another test.  A stumbling block.  Job’s wife was placed there to aid Satan’s cause.  But it failed yet again.  In verse 10 Job says, “You are talking like a foolish woman.  Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In my Bible the footnote for that verse states that the word foolish means “moral deficiency.”  I’m going to guess that his wife did not have the strongest faith in God.  Therefore, she was easily swayed.  The first part of 1 Peter 2:8 quotes Isaiah stating, “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.”  This was directed to those who did not believe.  Peter continues by saying, They stumble because they disobey the message.  This was Job’s wife.  She allowed herself to be used to try to sway her husband to disobey God.  She did this by her lack of faith in Him.
You might be looking at her and saying to yourself, “That’s awful.  Why would she do that?  She must have been a terrible person to do such a thing.”  Was she?  We don’t know the exact details of Job’s wife, but it really doesn’t matter.  We know the details of ourselves.  How many times have we become a stumbling block for someone else?  Do we do it to be malicious, or do we do it out of love?  Do we even realize we’re doing it?

I have a bad habit of doing this to my husband.  It’s not the same situation as Job, my husband isn’t being harmed, but it is a situation where if I’m not careful I can hurt him.

It seems to happen every time he learns something new about how to work with our children.  Here I am, trying to get him to treat them better, to try something different, to have more patience.  He’s a great dad, don’t get me wrong.  He loves his kids and he’s a great teacher to them.  He just doesn’t always get it.   Then he comes home and has this great new thing he wants to try, something he learned at church or in something he read.  I start to get upset because it feels like he’s judging me and telling me what I should do, even though I’ve been the one this entire time trying to get him to act better.  I’m with the kids longer than he is, and I know what works and what doesn’t.  I don’t have all the answers, but I know what has worked and do that.  So I get defensive causing him to stop his excitement in what he learned, and then he ultimately gives up.

This weekend the same thing happened.  My husband was at a conference at church that had to deal with working with difficult children.  The principles he learned could be applied to any child, and he was thrilled to start using them on our children and on our niece and nephew who are living with us at the moment.  Knowing how I’ve been in the past I added into my prayer time that God not allow me to be a stumbling block for my husband.  I know he doesn’t do any of this to put me down or boost himself up.  He really is one of those people who gets excited about something and can’t help but share it.  I tend to have some of that myself, so of course I should understand.  But since I still felt as though I was on trial, I needed God’s help to keep me from getting in his way.

I didn’t want to share any of this with my husband, because I felt that if I did that confession in and of itself would cause him to stumble.  I was doing okay with this, though I was very uncomfortable.
Monday morning my husband called me.  He was on his way to work and received a word from God.  He was told that he was to be a “father to the fatherless.”  For some reason that ended up rubbing me the wrong way.  I wasn’t mad, just unsure of where that left me.  Selfish, I know, but that’s how I felt.  I prayed while still on the phone with him, and God told me that I was to be my husband’s helpmate and support.  I wasn’t being “left out,” I just wasn’t supposed to be a big part of this plan.  It was for my husband, after all, and I was okay with that.

Well, Monday night came and life wasn’t going as joyously as I would have liked it to.  I became upset with him, feeling as though he was telling me what to do with our baby when I’m with him day in and day out and know what I’m doing.  I couldn’t hold myself back, and he could tell that I was unhappy.  Long story short, we ended up talking that night about my feelings, and he told me that he knew how I get and that he didn’t even want to share the latest development with me because of it.  Yeah, that hurt, but he explained that he didn’t want to hurt me which is why he struggled against telling me.  However, he lost the fight against God, knowing that I was supposed to be informed of all that was going on.  Through this I was able to share my feelings, and the idea that I could make him stumble was taken away.  It’s a great feeling.  It feels as though I was freed.
1 Corinthians 10:32 says, Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God.  That’s what I wanted to fight in myself, and I was able to with the help of the one I wanted to hide it from.

Psalm 119:165 says, Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.  God was there with us in all of this, and through faith in Him we were able to work this issue out without any harm done.
I like what Psalm 37:24 says: Though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with His hand.  There will be times when we slip up.  We will cause someone to stumble, or we will stumble ourselves.  But through our faith in God we will not fall.  He will pick us right back up and set our feet back on the path that He has laid out for us.

In your life, is there a situation where you have made yourself a stumbling block?  Are you keeping someone from moving forward?  It may not be the same situation I have.  Sometimes we listen to the ones we love and get upset for them.  If they have been wronged we are right there to defend them and let them know how awful that person is who wronged them.  By doing this we are placing a stone onto their path, causing them to stumble.  Instead, we need to be supportive of them, not perpetuate the situation, the feelings.  We could ask them how we could help them move on from this, or we could just be good listeners.

We tend to do harm out of love.  It’s because we love the person that we get in their way.  I’m sure Job’s wife loved him.  She didn’t want to see him hurt like he was.  Of course she was affected by all of this.  She just chose to deal with it in a different way.  Job continued to praise God in all things.  She did not.

These blocks, or stones, come in all different shapes, colors and sizes.  Our job is to recognize them in ourselves and not allow them to fall onto the path of anyone we may come into contact with.  As Christians, as God-fearing people, we need to help build people up, not help them to slip.  Seek God in this.  It is by your faith in Him that you will succeed.

Lord, thank You for taking away the burden I had, the fear that I would become a stumbling block for the man I love, the man who You chose for me.  Help me to see the times where I would be more of a harm, a hindrance, to anyone I talk to.  Help me not to let them stumble through my own anger or selfishness, and help me to remember that even through love, if I’m not careful, I may make them slip.  Help me to always build up, Lord.  In Your name, Amen.